


Cold

by glacis



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-27
Updated: 2010-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape's masks are ripped away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

Cold, by Seeker

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; 

His eyes were the color of the killing curse.

Snape hadn't noticed that until the moment he saw both at the same time.  The vivid emerald green of Harry Potter's eyes and the shadowy reflection of Avada Kedavra.  The same color Lily's eyes had been.  Perhaps it wasn't his mother's love that saved him from Voldemort that day.

Perhaps it was within him, that which he defeated.  Curse calling to curse.

Death defeating death.

Standing ankle-deep in corpses in the final battle, Snape caught his breath, looked from the Death Eaters in ranks around him to the wizards and witches defiantly encircled by them, and wondered why he never fully understood the meaning behind the color of Harry Potter's eyes.

This, then, was what it came down to at the end.  A choice, an unveiling, a nakedness he'd not felt since he was a child himself; brought about by and for the protection of the curse incarnate.  A tiny voice in the back of his mind laughed hysterically.

He'd known the Potter brat was trouble the moment he'd walked into his classroom ten years before.

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; 

"Brat?  You're calling me a brat?"

Snape rolled his eyes, thankful though he wouldn't admit it under torture that Harry was leaning over his shoulder and couldn't see the expression on his face.  "Are my memoirs now being written by committee?" he asked dryly.

"As if," Harry snorted.  "If I had my druthers it'd all be -"

"I know," Snape interrupted.  "Sex, potions and Muggle rock."

Harry was too busy laughing to notice when Snape turned on him and handily tipped him over his lap.  Then he was too busy gasping as Snape flipped his robes up and dove into his shorts.  Then too busy moaning and coming to talk at all.

When he'd finally worn the brat out enough to send him on his merry, muzzy way, Snape sighed, shivered, adjusted his own neglected erection with one hand and picked up his quill with the other.

"Want some help with that?" Harry asked breathily.

Snape licked his lips, tasting salt and bitter, smiling slightly.  "I thought we just established that I'm more than capable of both writing my own work and dealing with any distractions that come up along the way."

Harry snorted, a ridiculously attractive sound, and said sleepily, "Was talking about the distraction.  Or is it some kind of Snapish self-torture endurance test to write with a hard-on?"

"I find my enjoyment where I may, Harry," Snape sighed.  "Now do go away."

A kiss to the side of his face, a muttered "Come find me when you're ready to come!" and his pest finally did just that.  Snape shook his head, tried to control the grin that threatened to spread all over his face, and cast his mind back the previous year.

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; 

Voldemort laughed, a creakier sound than the frightening cackle he was no doubt attempting, and raised his wand.  Tossing a quarter century of infiltration and observation out the window with one considered if insane move, Snape threw back his hood, stepped forward, and took the entire force of the curse against his chest.

Unfortunately, at the time, though to his great good fortune in the long run, it turned out to be Cruciatus, not Avada Kedavra.  At the moment it hit, his entire focus was on Voldemort.  Even as he tried to tell Potter to move, to do it, to kill the bastard, he heard Sirius Black screaming the words he couldn't force past pain-constricted throat muscles.  Thankfully, he wasn't alone in his defense and his distraction, his sacrifice, was enough.

Barely.

"Now!" called Dumbledore, and spells flew from a score of wands, concentrated on the Death Eaters forming a human wall around Voldemort.

Dimly, over the rush of blood in his ears and the harsh thumping of his heart in his chest as it came close to bursting from the agony of the curse, Snape heard snarling first beside, then over, then beyond him.  The werewolves must have joined the battle, because no human could make those sounds.  Screams broke out, high-pitched and abruptly cut off, as more wizards fell.

A figure he recognized broke from the ranks of the Death Eaters, the sun shining in his soft blond hair as he knelt beside Snape's writhing body.  Young Malfoy's expression was torn.  The ambivalence there was a testament to Snape's efforts over the years to show the lad another path, even if in the end Lucius had won.

"I never knew," Draco said.  The only way Snape could discern the words was to read his lips.  Astonishment, betrayal, pain, anger; these things he could accept.  "How could you hide this?"

I did what I had to do, Snape thought, hoping his own resignation could show through the tears hazing his eyes.  I wish you had known.  I wish I could have trusted you.

I wish I could have saved you.

Before another thought could force its way through the static in his brain, Draco arched, his head flying back, his mouth falling open, as green light ripped into and through him.

As green as Harry's eyes.

What a foolish thought to have fixed in his mind as he faced death, but Snape couldn't shake it free.

Draco's body weighed nothing as it fell across Snape's, and the convulsions quickly threw him off anyway.  An ephemeral presence, in death as he had been in life.  Above him, Voldemort continued to rage, and the agony continued to pour over him.

It went on forever.  His skin shriveled on his limbs, his eyes liquefied in his skull, his skeleton shattered.  He was utterly astonished to find himself intact when the energy flowing through him abruptly ended.  Surely he was dead?

The sun disappeared  from his bleary field of vision, displaced by a pale, sweating face with black hair falling over it and wide green eyes staring urgently down at him.  The world was eerily silent.  He couldn't even hear the screams any more.

"Harry," he asked, wondering why the boy didn't answer, "why is it so cold?"

Crystals fell from the curse-green eyes, splashing on his face.  Tiny licks of ice dousing the fire eating his skin.  Tears.  Whoever would imagine Harry Potter would cry for Severus Snape?

Not Snape, that was for certain.

A second obstruction joined the first, this one framed with flowing white hair that looked pewter gray in the fading light.  Dumbledore asked him a question - he was always asking questions - but since Snape couldn't hear him he didn't bother answering.  Then strong hands, old and young, reached out toward him.

They didn't leave his side all the way back to Hogwarts.  Snape didn't remember much of the aftermath of battle, but he did remember that.

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; 

The first indication he had that the present was again intruding on the past was when those same strong hands suddenly lifted the hem of his robe and scrabbled to part his thighs.

"Harry!" he protested, not as strongly as he might be expected to, but as firmly as he could given that Harry's mouth was sucking the end of his prick and he could feel his brain cells dying off in clusters.  He steadfastly refused to admit his protest was actually a weak breathy whine.  A man had some pride.

Not much, though, when it came to mind-blowing sex from a lover who knew every single weak spot on his body.  Strong suction to the tip, the flick of a tongue along the ridge, pushing back the foreskin and lapping at the sensitive skin, and Snape gave up the unequal battle and pushed back his chair.

Harry followed.  On his knees.  Still sucking.

"Holy... augh ... ah, shite," Snape gave up on any attempt at verbalization as Harry sped up his movements.  Staring down at the shaggy black head, hair intersected by his own long pale fingers clenched in it, bobbing up and down over his lap, and Snape's self-control dissipated completely.  He arched against the back of the chair, babbling under his breath, and came so hard he went light-headed.

When he got his breath, and his composure, back, he glared at his troublemaking love.  "I realize the concept of 'work to do' is foreign to your nature," he began.

Harry cut him off with a sloppy kiss.  Snape licked back and forgot what he was going to say.  Eventually they broke for breath, before Snape could get dizzy all over again.

"You're welcome," Harry told him with admittedly deserved smugness.

"Brat," Snape grumbled.  Still, it was impossible not to return his own pale shadow of the sunny grin Harry gave him.

"Right, then," Harry told him cheerfully, "You get back to your tale-telling and I'm off to practice."

"Don't fall off the broom," Snape told his retreating back as he headed out the door.  "England would not care to lose its champion and I, for one, have plans for that body."

Harry froze in his tracks and shot a glance over his shoulder, bright eyes gleaming at him in anticipation.  It struck Snape again how close the color was to the killing curse, and yet was the antithesis of death.  The truest and best life he ever could have hoped to attain.

"Promise?" Harry teased.

"Threat," he answered, as always.  The salacious expression fixed on Harry's face as he left was his own promise that the night ahead would be well worth the anticipation.

It always was.

Trying not to think of how bloody lucky he was, since he was a firm believer in jinxing oneself, having done it often enough, Snape turned back to his memoirs with determination.

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; 

The infirmary was chaos.  Too many had not made it through the final battle, and more were in need of medical assistance.  Pomfrey, limping from her own injury, flitted unevenly from bed to bed.  Mediwitches and mediwizards he'd never seen before leaned over a cot here, a bed there, comforted and healed and supported the wounded.

Snape wanted to be back in his dungeon.

Harry still hadn't let go.

Needing to gain control in any way he could, Snape gathered himself and gave Harry a modified glare.  While grateful for the support, he would not allow himself to be an object of pity to anyone, particularly to a young man he'd been trying to teach to defend himself since he was a boy.  More particularly when the only reason he was IN the infirmary is because his efforts had failed and he'd had to physically throw his body in the breach to keep the man alive.

Pathetic.  The act of a Gryffindor, not a self-respecting Slytherin.  Simply pathetic.

Not that Harry seemed to find it so, of course.  Having relied on blind courage more often than brains so often in his short life, it seemed he was impressed with Snape's idiocy.  Snape hastened to correct any misapprehensions he might have.

"That was the most inept piece of work it has ever been my misfortune to witness," he attempted to growl.  What actually came out was "That was the mommph!" as Harry leaned forward over the bed, held him down with one hand with ridiculous ease, and planted a kiss on him the likes of which Snape had never been privileged to share.

When he was finally allowed the use of his mouth, Snape could find no better use for it than to hang agape as he stared at Harry.  That earned him the first wide, unshadowed grin he'd ever gotten from that quarter.

"Your bark won't fool me again, Professor," Harry told him softly.  "I've seen who you really are, now.  I'm not going to forget it, no matter how much you growl and scowl at me.  You were willing to die to save my life."

Snape worked his jaw, trying to find a way to dismiss the evident truth, but all that earned him was another reality-shifting kiss.  Harry licked him one last time across the lower lip and smirked.

"You may not realize it yet," he whispered, "but you're mine now, and I don't let go easily.  Or at all, for that matter.  Now that I know what's under that frosty exterior, I've seen who you really are.  I've got you now, and I'm never letting you go."

It took a year to convince him, but eventually Snape realized Harry meant what he said.  For the first time in his life, he wasn't defined by the masks he wore.  He was seen for who he was, and loved for it, to his absolute astonishment.  No matter how hard he tried, and he did try, Harry never gave up.  And Snape wasn't left out in the cold any longer.

Harry made sure of that.

&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; 

"Always will, you know."

Harry's voice drifted though his mind, and Snape smiled.  Laying his quill beside the parchment, he blew across the ink until the shine was gone, and slowly rolled it up.  The past was where it belonged now.  He could concentrate on the now, and the yet to come, and let the burden of the past fall away.  Placing the scroll in the tray with the others, he turned his back on it.

He was warm now.  Close proximity to Harry Potter could do that to the coldest fellow.  And since Harry was determined not to go anywhere, and reassured Snape on that fact every chance he got, Snape had the feeling he would never be cold again.

End.


End file.
